Singapore Airlines First Class ICN-SIN (SQ 15)

This was such a long flight, I figured I may as well break it down into two or three posts covering each segment as well as the first class menu. Here’s the report on our second segment from Seoul to Singapore, including our visit to the Asiana First Class Lounge.

We cleared security in Seoul and headed upstairs to take a look around. Our flight arrived a bit early, so we had just over 2 hours to kill. It was pretty dead, but Megan appreciated the neat rows of flowers at every gate, some varieties of which she’d never seen before.

After walking halfway down the pier, we doubled back to the central shopping area where the Asiana lounge was located. I didn’t even know they had a first class lounge at this airport, but we were directed that way after showing our boarding passes for the next flight.

This currently ranks as my favorite lounge, even when compared to the Private Room at the Singapore SilverKris lounge. Part of that is we were there all by ourselves, unattended. Another part is they had self-serve Haagen-Dazs and Johnnie Walker Blue.

The only reason I didn’t abuse these was because I had already stuffed myself full on the way over here. That must be the logic they rely upon when they design these clubs. Also, I don’t understand their liquor selection. Most of those are $10-20 bottles, and then they throw in the Blue Label. Are they just showing off? @bnickeson, international man of mystery and connoisseur of fine spirits, suggested I empty a water bottle and fill it back up, but I didn’t go quite that far 😉

Another reason this lounge is great is that it has one of the best setups for plane spotting. You can’t see it here, but it is possible to watch planes take off and land. There are chaise lounges set up along this big window looking across the tarmac to the other terminal.

There was also a variety of other cold and hot food. Again, I was too full to bother. I did check out the restrooms. There were no shower facilities at SFO, I didn’t look at SIN, and the one I found at HKG was basic at best. But these were pretty nice. I didn’t bother with a shower because we still had five or six hours ahead of us.

There was even a fancy Asian toilet with 50 dozen buttons to make you breakfast, sing you a lullaby, and make a tiny origami crane. I’ll spare you the toilet photo. Soon enough, it was time to go back to the plane. We were fortunate to have an Emirates A380 next door. Those things are big!

This flight had a new crew, and I actually think the service was better overall even though I didn’t care for my meal. I started with the grilled octopus tapas, which was okay but too chewy. Everything else on the plate was fine.

This was followed by Singapore’s trademark satay, salad, and soup. I passed on the salad because I was getting really full, but I did try the sweetcorn soup. Okay, but nothing special. Certainly not tomato soup. 😉 Perhaps part of the problem was my lack of appetite. Food, any food, will taste better when you are actually hungry.

For my main, I did not Book the Cook, and the flight attendant recommended I try the sam gye tang, a Korean-style stuffed chicken with rice in broth. Since we were in Korea, she promised it would be tasty and authentic. Authentic maybe, but definitely not tasty. I probably just didn’t know what to do with it. Megan was smart. She got the fillet.

I was presented with a small skinless and boiled chicken in a bowl of hot broth. That alone worries me on an airplane that might experience turbulence at any moment. It certainly didn’t look appetizing. Then consider that it was still tied up with a ball of rice inside, and all I had to eat this thing was a pair of chopsticks. For a while I stared at it, wondering if I should just poke it with a stick and try eating it off the bone like a popsicle. Even if I started by drinking the broth, how do I carve a chicken with chopsticks? 🙁 I apologize if the photo above looks bad, but believe me, there was no way to make this look good.

I managed to poke my way in and ate some of the chicken and rice. But it tasted about as good as it looked. I passed on cheese and fruit again, just getting a scoop of chocolate ice cream. This was pretty bad ice cream. Although it tasted good, it was very icy and much too hard to eat, almost like it had melted and been refrozen with dry ice.

Since I wasn’t sleeping well, I had a cappuccino and a praline before turning the seat back into a bed and watching a movie for the rest of the flight. Megan and I were beginning to worry about the in flight entertainment. With only a dozen or so Hollywood movies, and most of them not very good, we’d already seen almost anything worth watching.

Soapbox Warning: This is partly Hollywood’s fault; I gave up after 10 minutes of forcing myself to watch Battleships. However, United’s new international IFE has far more variety, including a lot of classic films and television shows from earlier decades when original, well-made films were more important than international distribution and cross merchandising. I think my favorite film on KrisWorld was Father of Invention, a film I’d never heard about featuring a washed up seen-on-TV inventor played by Kevin Spacey. My second favorite film was Moonrise Kingdom, one I’d already seen but watched again, in which the best scene is a shirtless Bill Murray going out back to drink a bottle of wine and chop wood. Maybe I would watch Battleships if it had Bill Murray or Kevin Spacey. Or Bruce Willis. I’m off to see Looper today. It’s a fitting movie. All the good actors are getting old.

I will compliment the flight attendant for noticing I was still warm on this flight and offering to turn down the cabin temperature. It didn’t help much, but it was better than the first leg of our trip. As it was a much shorter flight we were soon descending into Singapore.

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About Scott Mackenzie

Scott is a former scientist who created Travel Codex to unravel the complexity of travel loyalty programs. He now lives in Seattle while attending business school and flies over 150,000 miles every year.

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